How to Draw an Alien: An Awesome Little Green Guy With a Twist

Start the alien drawing by sketching out a circle for the head and a curved rectangle for the body.

Add the face cross – ours is slightly tilted sideways.

Now we improve on the head by adding the chin, the same way we have done in the princess drawing.

Draw a curved triangle with the tip at the face cross centreline. The triangle starts flat on the head circle on the right, but goes out a little way past the head, before connecting back with another straight line on the left. This creates a cute cheek shape for our alien.

Don’t forget to connect the head to the body with two straight lines for the neck!

Next, draw the legs. For each leg, draw a pair of parallel lines going down from the torso and add a triangle shape for the feet.

This alien’s left hand is going to be raised up in a greeting, so draw the left arm as two “V” shapes attached at the shoulder.

The alien’s other arm is going to be holding onto a helmet. Draw a kind of oval for the helmet,  slightly overlapping the alien’s body. Keen eyes will notice the helmet is flatter on the right and at the bottom. It is also not quite big enough for the alien’s head, but hey, this is just a cartoon – no need to draw realistic proportions.

The right arm is laid over the helmet. It is built from two simple rectangles, joined at an angle at the elbow.

The alien’s left hand is raised showing a friendly peace sign. Draw the palm of the alien’s hand with a rectangle that’s the same width as the wrist at the bottom, but wider at the top. Add the fingers by drawing each of them as a long, skinny rectangle. The thumb is “L” shaped, sticking out from the palm, with another rectangle for the folded back little finger.

The right hand is constructed in the same way, though this one is draping down over the helmet. The fingers go in the same direction and overlap one another – only a little of the furthest finger is visible.

Our alien only has three fingers and a thumb. Is it alien anatomy or another cartooning trick? Your choice!

Next, we add features to the alien’s face. Draw two large ovals for the eyes at the very edges of the head circle. Then add a smiling, slightly curved mouth, almost at level with the original circle shape. Add two lines a bit above the mouth to indicate nostrils – most “little green guy” type aliens don’t have much in the way of noses, so this will do.

Finally, add four curved lines to the top of the alien’s head to make antennae out of. The direction and shape that you arrange these antennae into can say a lot about your alien’s personality – for example, antennae pointed in a single direction makes your alien look very slick and put together. Our alien’s antennae go in a few different directions, making for a friendlier, fun-loving, casual alien.

Now that we’ve got the basics of the alien drawn, let’s start sketching in some details.

Add two open triangles around the eyes – a larger one that wraps around from the top to the middle of the alien’s eye, and a smaller one from the middle to just under the eye.

Improve on the helmet by adding a line for the visor, an oval on the right side of the helmet for the hinge, and a curved rectangle at the bottom so that the helmet can connect to the neck of the spacesuit.

This alien is wearing a spacesuit jacket – at least, he will be, once we add details to it.

Start with the collar around the alien’s neck, which is two oval shapes stacked on top of one another.

Then add a rectangular plate on the chest, and draw some boxes and circles on and on top of it. These will later become dials and knobs to monitor various things on the spacesuit with.

Finally, double up the lower edge of the jacket add a line for the zipper.

For our final step, we’ll make the alien’s legs into boots. Draw the top of the boot the same as the jacket collar with an oval touch wider than the legs.

Join the boot edges to the feet sketch with two lines. Finally, add a half-circle on each foot, just for decoration.

Let’s outline the alien drawing, starting with the facial features.

Fill the eyes in black, leaving a line of white in each eye as you are colouring to make a shiny highlight. Draw the antennae and add a small teardrop shape at the end of each.

The nostrils, mouth and edges around the eyes are then just a straight outline of the sketch.

Outline the head – breaking off the line for the eye nubs, and following the chin line at the bottom.

Next, outline the neck and collar – these are just a straight outline of the sketch.

Draw out the alien’s jacket next. Add small teardrop joints to the suit at the shoulders and elbows of the jacket and outline the rest from the sketch. Don’t forget the lower edge at the bottom of the jacket!

Finish drawing the arms by outlining the hands. Round off the fingertips and leave out the edge line where the fingers join to the palm and where it is hidden behind the fingers.

Next, outline the alien’s helmet. The improvements to the sketch here come from the visor bulging out a little more than the rest of the helmet and adding an extra line on the neck ring.

The legs and the upper boot rims are a straight outline of the sketch. Then starts the fun.

Turn the two half-circles into dials by drawing the needle and a few lines for the scale. These boots surely can measure and adjust the gravitational pull as the alien visits different planets.

Then, split the feet with two rounded toes on each foot to give the shoes a proper alien look. Finish the boots by joining the feet back up to the rims.

Let’s add some more alien technology to the jacket chest plate! Turn the two circles into dials by adding a needle and scale as we did on the boots.

Then add a linear scale to one of the rectangles and a square push-button to the other. I wonder what those are for…

Then outline the rest of the sketch lines to complete the jacket details. And that is it – you know how to draw an alien now.

And here is the cleaned-up result of our “How to draw an alien” tutorial  – the finished, outlined alien drawing after erasing the sketch lines.

We hope you had fun drawing the familiar “little green guy with large eyes” type alien. We have certainly made him into one friendly and casual type. He must have been visiting Earth often, as he has taken into wearing a very Earthly astronaut looking spacesuit and flashing the friendly peace “V” sign.

The very last step in the “How to draw an alien” tutorial is the usual colouring.

Now, the little man himself needs to be, of course, green – which we use for the head, hands and legs. We have left the spacesuit white, with golden trim (well, dark yellow) and some light blue shading. The chest plate and helmet visor are shaded silver (or light grey).

Finally, we could not resist a spacey background with planets and a flying saucer parked near the moon crater. If you want to add one to your drawing,  you can learn how to draw a UFO in another easy tutorial.